"Many things we need can wait. The child cannot. Now is the time his bones are formed, his mind developed. To him we cannot say tomorrow, his name is today." - Gabriela Mistral

Monday, April 12, 2010

Moving Forward

Our follow-up visit to the first Developmental Pediatrician we consulted took place this afternoon. Following the BAER hearing test last December, we visited an ENT to check whether there was anything wrong with Little A's ear. All there was was a buildup of earwax that caused a blockage, which explained the "peripheral hearing loss".

The Dev Ped was very pleased with Little A's improvement over the course of his past 3 months' twice weekly Occupational Therapy. His eye contact is much more consistent and he is less hyperactive, actually sitting down in a chair for a length of time (though this could have been because he was past his naptime and was actually quite sleepy). More importantly, he sat down to complete every tabletop task assigned to him with a minimum of prompting.

The Casein Free Diet seems to be working, so the next step is to remove gluten from Little A's diet, which is much more of a challenge as it not only takes 9 months to be fully eliminated from the human body, it is present invisibly in so many foods, from soy sauce to cornflakes, Little A's only snack food of choice.

The doctor also told us to get in the queue for a Speech Therapist, as this is the only thing Little A is really still lacking. In the Philippines, only 30 individuals are licensed as Speech Therapists every year, and of those 30, most seek greener pastures abroad. So they are a limited and therefore valuable commodity.

This week, with summer in full swing, Little A resumes preschool for a 6.5 week period, along with his continued twice weekly OT sessions. We're keeping our fingers crossed that things continue to move forward.